There are many kinds of electronic components to be mounted to boards to produce various types of electronic circuit boards, some of which are replaceable with other kinds of components. The total number of kinds of electronic components is furthermore increased if compatible components among different manufacturers are included. In forming an electronic circuit board by mounting electronic components of various kinds to a board, it is necessary to select electronic components that meet various kinds of needs set in the design stage of the electronic circuit. In mounting the various kinds of components on boards, it is also necessary to that the mounting considerations not be mutually influenced by characteristics and durabilities of the electronic components to be mounted and other electronic components. A growing requirement these days is to correctly recognize shapes of components and highly accurately mount the components as a lead pitch is minimized in accordance with an increased density of components.
More specifically, the following factors should be taken into consideration when the electronic components are mounted to the board: the kind of nozzles and chucks for carrying the electronic components, a moving speed of a mounting head equipped with the nozzles and chucks, necessary fall positions of the nozzles and chucks when taking out the electronic components from a component supply section or mounting the components, that is, heightwise positions when the nozzles and chucks take out the electronic components or heightwise positions when the nozzles and chucks mount the electronic components to the board, a moving speed of the board which has at least one electronic component mounted thereon, particularly, an acceleration of the board and various kinds of allowances, etc.
These various kinds of electronic components are packed in tapes to be automatically supplied to the mounter or contained in trays, or handled in the form of sticks or in bulk. This component supply fashion or manner including an accommodation pitch or the like of components, i.e., packing forms of components should also be taken in mind when mounting data are to be formed.
Meanwhile, when the electronic components are mounted, whether or not the electronic components are properly selected or directed is recognized, so that improper components are exchanged or the direction of the components is corrected based on the recognition results. In order to achieve the above inspection, it is necessary to form inspection data, as the mounting data, on the basis of information related to the electronic components such as shapes, surface reflectivities, colors, hue, polarity marks, printed characters, and color codes marked on the components, etc.
Component catalog brochures have been used heretofore to form the above-described mounting data or inspection data and properly mount the selected components on boards so as to select electronic components of various kinds in conformity with the needs from the viewpoint of the circuit design and mount the selected electronic components properly. Detailed and complicated component information is edited and recorded for every kind of electronic component in the brochures according to a predetermined classification method. In some cases, electronic components have been actually measured with the use of calipers or the like to obtain necessary data.
It is difficult not only to actually measure the electronic components as above, but to search for the electronic components meeting the needs from the catalog brochures. The success of the optimum selection of required components depends on how carefully the catalog brochures are referred in detail, which consumes a large quantity of labor and time. In particular, the recent diversification of needs increases the number of kinds of electronic components which are provided, enlarging the amount of information data, thus hindering the optimum selection of components furthermore.
For solving the issue, a so-called component electronic catalog has been provided, whereby data of electronic components in the catalog brochures are handled as image data to be displayed on a screen. The image data edited and stored according to a predetermined classification method in the electronic catalog are read out and displayed on the screen by a special read device, a personal computer or the like in accordance with predetermined classification and search procedures. The electronic components can thus be rationally searched and selected in a short time while the display screen is changed through the search or look-up operation. The electronic catalog EC using a storage medium such as a CD-ROM holds the image data for displaying various data of various kinds of electronic components on the screen in an image data file IMF as shown in FIG. 41. The image data file IMF holds character data such as numerics and characters and figure data such as pictures, figures, etc. altogether in one set or in a suitably divided state.
The above-described component electronic catalog EC stores various kinds of data of shapes, dimensions, surface states, characteristics, and usage, etc. of the electronic components as the image data to be displayed on the screen in the form of photographs, drawings, tables, and graphs, and naturally includes data for forming the mounting data of the components as well.
A flow chart of FIG. 42 shows a conventionally practiced sequence to form the mounting data with the use of the electronic catalog EC. The sequence will be described below. First, the electronic catalog EC is loaded to a read device and the read device is started to read out the catalog on the screen.
Then, a command is input through manipulation of a search key and setting of conditions in accordance with predetermined classification and search procedures. A command analysis section subsequently starts searching. Commands are repeatedly input until one electronic component is selected.
FIG. 43 shows a display screen obtained by designating a rough classification group of transistors and then searching bipolar transistors (PNP) . . . 2SA, 2SB in a detailed classification group. A cursor in the screen is located to point the first component among 62 components concerned. A user can search for any component among the 62 components by moving the cursor to a column of the required component. As a result of this, one electronic component is selected, thereby to detect image data of which component should be displayed on the screen. The image data of the detected component are displayed on the screen according to predetermined procedures by the user's manipulation.
For example, supposing that the user designates a search of the component 2SA1022 on the screen of FIG. 43 and manipulates an explanation key, image data related to the rudimental description of the component 2SA1022 are displayed on the screen as shown in FIG. 44.
When a search (S) is selected on the screen of FIG. 44, a list of display items in the rough classification group selectable on the screen of FIG. 44 is window-displayed as in FIG. 45. If an outline view is selected on the screen of FIG. 45 or directly from the screen of FIG. 44, image data related to the outer shape of the component are shown on the screen as indicated in FIG. 46. If a land view is selected, image data related to the land are displayed on the screen as in FIG. 47. If a taping size is selected, image data related to the taping size appear on the screen as in FIG. 48. Meanwhile, if a reel size is selected, image data related to the reel size are shown on the screen as in FIG. 49.
FIG. 50 is a window display of image data related to a characteristic curve as the characteristic curve is selected on the initial explanation screen when an electronic component of a motor control circuit of AN6650 is subjected to search. FIG. 51 is a window display obtained when an example of an applied circuit is selected with priority on the initial explanation screen of FIG. 50, with a block diagram added.
The user can relatively easily select the electronic components fit to the needs from the viewpoint of the circuit design by searching the component data as described hereinabove and freely visually confirm various kinds of data of selected and to-be-mounted components necessary to form mounting data of the selected electronic components by the above search. At the same time, the user can freely search data correspondingly to a component mounting method by chucks or suction nozzles, or depending on whether the components are recognized or not or how the components are recognized, etc.
In order to form the mounting data based on the data visually confirmed with the use of the electronic catalog as above, the visually confirmed mounting data of components have been conventionally manually input to a special automatic data processor or an automatic data processor such as a personal computer, combined with preliminarily formed data of mounting positions of the components or the like, thereby to data-process and obtain the component mounting data and then mount the components based on the operation control of a mounter.
The above-described utilization of the conventional electronic catalog enables relatively easy selection of electronic components satisfying the needs owing to a programmed rational search system, so that various sorts of data can be efficiently visually confirmed one by one. However, the recorded data are image data intended totally for screen display and therefore cannot be directly used to automatically form the mounting data for mounting the selected electronic components. As such, the user is obliged to take the trouble to manually input the visually confirmed data to the automatic data processor while sequentially selecting the required electronic components in the search operation. In other words, it still takes a considerable amount of labor and time to form the mounting data even with the help of the conventional electronic catalog.